Orphan at the Edge of the World

On a jagged peak in a twisted and desolate plane of existence, a ragged old man dressed in dusty rags raised his head. In some far off realm, the book he had penned and bound in human skin long ago called to him. Again, it summoned the man to aid it in revenge against the alien forces they both were once enthralled to.

Answering the call, the man began traversing the boundaries of existence, drawing near his dear old friend. "I hear you already, Nomi. Revenge, my wrinkled a**. It stopped being about that centuries ago. You've grown a taste for the toys they use to play with mortals as I've grown a taste for the chaotic flavor of their formless flesh."

Disdaining to argue with the man, the wailing faced book sent a set of images describing the plot it had used and its current situation. Of the many baits the book had laid, the one that hooked its current prey was a wildly popular RPG series it had helped to resonate with a lower dimensional reality. A certain book loving entity that manipulated mortals within that realm had been able to sense Nomi through that resonance.

Desiring to claim the abandoned conduit Nomi had disguised itself as, the entity had manipulated events in both dimensions. In the lower, it had manipulated its two conduit books into the hands of a tragic hero, unwittingly shelved for the hero's adopted child to fall victim to. In the mid dimension, it had reached through the resonance of the game to manipulate a soon to die, weak willed modern man into seeking out and buying Nomi at a fantasy/horror convention.

With the aid of an elaborate ritual held by one of the entity's cultists, the alien creature relaxed the hold of reality around his intended child victim's home and lured the child to tap into the power of its books. Pushing far more of itself through the conduits than the child could stand, it shredded the boy's soul as it reached through. The man in the other reality died as he was meant to and the entity pulled the man's soul toward its personal realm to act as the beacon for its power.

Finished with the vision, the old man appeared in the cheap apartment of the dead man just in time to see a writhing mass of impossible description attempt to grab Nomi out from underneath the dead man's collapsed body. With inhuman speed, the old man rushed forward and snatched up the book. Old man and book joined abilities to isolate then sever the writhing mass from its host body. In fear and pain it had never experienced before, the entity retreated back to its maelstrom abode at the edge of structured existence, bleeding essence as it fled.

As the old man slurped up his reward, he looked down at the dead man slumped undignified on the floor as the book sent soft entreaty for help to claim its prizes as well. Assuring Nomi that he hadn't forgotten, they joined powers once again to take advantage of the alien entity's hard work. Soon the man's soul would drift past the child's spiritual remnants. When that happened, the child's soul bits that the old man had been keeping from dissipating would be attracted to the man's soul for survival. Nomi's power would ride them back to the boy's body and claim its prize then.

While they waited, the old man looked around at the scattered evidence of the man's life. "Ha, you're name's Al too? A sad man living a sad life only to be played with by greater forces and die. Nomi, was he good to you?"

The book sent the old man flashes of its time spent in the apartment. For the majority, Nomi had been stuck up on the bookshelf after the dead man and his girlfriend had looked at a couple of its pages, both equally creeped out. It wasn't until Al's girlfriend left him a heartbroken mess that Nomi saw some action, being moved from the bookshelf to the pile of 'that b*tch's stuff' and back again every couple of weeks.

On the last night of Al's life, he had gotten drunk and started playing 'Rim of the Sky'. Using some home making add-on to the game, the sad and lonely guy had made a family only to wander away and come back to it being gone because of a dragon. Somewhere in the process of making another family and going to fight the last boss, he became so emotionally distressed he'd triggered an aneurysm. Nomi, who'd been sitting on the pile of ex's stuff that week, was what the man had grabbed and cried on right before he died.

Leaking a little of the insanity that lied underneath the placid surface of the old man's personality, the rag wearing hermit said, "Simpering boar t*t, because we shared names I was going to let the boy's spiritual remains bolster you and let you have a new adventure but even if I did that, you'd probably just waste it! How dare you cry on a book!?"

The old man reached out with his power, lacerating the dead man's soul with wounds. Before he did more, Nomi called out.

The old hermit said, "Being hugged and cried on felt nice? Oh...well, the little boy over there deserves a second chance too. Let them share it. I suppose I won't be a glutton. Let them have whatever essence ended up on that side."

***

As reality reconstructed itself around Al's stirring consciousness, the multitude of barely audible voices and flashes of colorful but impossible geometries faded enough for him to see he was in an unfamiliar yet vaguely recognizable place. From his kneeling position, that seemed a little too close to the floor, he saw three open books haphazardly skewed before him. Within a fog of confusion and the sensation of mild hangover, habit kicked him in to motion as he collected the books. As the realization that his hands were far too small and smooth to be his registered, two of the three books vanished before his eyes but not before he recognized them.

In a childish voice that sounded nothing like his own, Al thought aloud, "My god, the patchwork skin on one and that bark-like cover with the gnarly symbol on the other. Those are, uh, were 'Changing Winds' and 'Infinite Knowledge'. And this one is 'The Mana Crystal Wars. I read somewhere that this history book can sometimes act like 'Infinite Knowledge' when read at the right time. This... I don't understand. I'm obviously not dreaming. Am I trapped in the game?...

"The last thing I remember was taking my character to fight the last dragon in the Land of Souls. Wait, no, I did something else. I can't believe I hugged and cried all over that creepy a** book. My head hurt so bad I obviously wasn't thinking straight. What actually happened to me?"

Fighting down a surge of rising panic, Al stood up and made his way through the two story rustic manor. He finally found what he was looking for in a bedroom, a shield decoration flat and reflective enough to serve as a mirror.

While looking himself over critically, Al mumbled, " Around ten years old or so with dirty blond hair. Emphasis on the dirty. When was the last time this child took a bath, a week ago?... Aquamarine is not a real eye...Oh, it's just blue-green heterochromia. Still a bit too bright to be... Okay, I've definitely still got a few marbles loose going on about eyeballs in the face of all this f***ing impossible s***!... Well, the features are too soft and too slender boned to be an Empyrean or Northerner so I must be the other white meat, one of those magic loving Highlanders.

" All in all I guess I'd clean up nice but more importantly, if I'm stuck in the game, how would I access my menu? It's not like I have a controller. Maybe if I think really hard about inventory? Skills? Status!? Come the f*** on!"

No stylized screen popped up behind Al's tightly squeezed eyelids but something did respond to his emotional outburst. A foreign but gentle energy bubbled up from someplace within himself. That energy connected with a more nebulous, alien and dangerous feeling substance that permeated the house like invisible miasma. As if a spark met kerosene, his mind lit on fire with bits and scraps of memory, a messy card stack of incomplete fragments. Not much could be salvaged from the Gordian knot of memories but each and every one was both enlightening and invited even more questions and confusion.

The child's name was Orison, the same name Al had wanted to give his orphan before he found out the game didn't allow it. Through the child's perspective he witnessed people being shot down by arrows as a man whispered for him to 'hide and make your way as far east as you can' before leading their pursuers deeper into the darkness. Whatever details existed of that journey or how the child ended up in an orphanage were completely missing. From the small details Al could pick out, it seemed like the western-most mountain border between the North Lands and the Highlands. It was a place where a highly territorial and xenophobic group of Northlanders called the Forgotten lived.

The memories had a brief bit of clarity when Al's character picked him up from the orphanage but that moment was eerie and more than a little terrifying when seen from the child's perspective. It started with the child being called over by the orphanage director. A silent staring contest ensued with an expressionless Northlander in heavy armor that occasionally shimmered with magic energy. For some reason the child couldn't even begin to understand, he realized that the intimidating man had just adopted him.

The boy said in a rushed panic to the orphanage director, "Really!? You mean this is actually happening!?"

Dipping into a sarcastic tone while facing the director, Orison continued, "Wow, thanks for trusting me to a complete stranger."

Turning to Al's character, the boy finished in a sad and resigned voice, " I promise I won't trouble you any more than this but... could I just have a moment to get my things and say goodbye to everyone?"

Taking the stony silence as permission, Orison turned around and went to gather up his meager belongings midst hugs and tearful partings. An unintelligible mix of children's faces and emotionally meaningful interactions blurred the memories once more. Next, a scene of the child being abducted by Al's character, blinded by a flash of light and being knocked into a short monolith with a crude wizard etched on to it, came into focus. As Al's character mumbled something about choosing the wrong 'FT landmark', Orison had just enough time to ogle the other two monoliths that shifted between real and illusionary before being blinded once again and appearing in front of his new home.

The last clear memory was of Orison's cat lady 'mother' anxiously bidding Orison to mind himself well for no more than two days. She needed to go to the nearest village for desperately needed supplies. Despite that the home was lavish and well furnished otherwise, it lacked nearly all of the most practical and basic necessities. 'To sum it up, it is a home that was all form and little function' according to Mother Yaya.

Less than an hour after his adopted mother left, boredom prompted the surprisingly obedient child to park himself beside the bookshelf just outside of the room with alchemy equipment and a magic item workbench. Thumbing through the historical books with the best pictures by the nearby window, Orison felt a faint subconscious tugging after opening 'Magic Crystal Wars'. That subconscious tug had him breaking his word not to go into the alchemy room. With the historical book tucked into his left arm, he reached out with his right to grab the two sinister looking books off the top shelf just inside the door.

Finding the two books surprisingly weighty, Orison fumbled his hold on all three. On their descent to the floor, they opened up awkwardly in front of him when time or perhaps space seemed to have frozen. Three lines were simultaneously spoken in the same gravelly and chilling voice, seeming to prompt Orison to make choices while supernatural forces were playing tug-of-war with his entire being.

Absolutely terrified, Orison thought, "Have I opened books of heretical secret insights or the works of a mad mage?"

The many mouthed voice rung out their dialogues with only a bit of both being caught by the boy in the throws of fear. One confirmed the choice of secret scholarly insight while the other two confirmed knowledge granted from the path of mages. Orison had finally managed to squeeze his eyes shut, as the forces pulling on him started to loosen its hold, but flew widely open in the next moment. Foreign power and knowledge began forcefully stuffing itself into his head, into the very core of his being. Upon once again viewing the books impossibly suspended in air, the gravelly voices repeated their dialogue once more as the supernatural forces resumed their merciless tug-of-war.

In fear and pain, Orison screamed, "Please, I mean no harm. Cease this mage work. I beg you!"

A second influx of power and knowledge ruptured his soul and overloaded his mind. And as the conflicting supernatural forces ripped the suddenly unresistant and tattered soul to shreds, the gravelly and chilling voice intoned the confirmation of acquiring follower friendly magic insight and knowledge from the mage path.

In the sensory deprived darkness, the dying sparks of Orison's spiritual remnants felt the presence of a weakened and defenseless soul brushing past its space, caught in the wake of the very force that had destroyed itself. Beyond conscious thought or emotion, in an instinctual bid for survival, the remnants did the only thing they could do. Lacking the strength to fight or the ability to devour, the remnants sought out the wounds and weak spots of the helpless soul and silently infiltrated, attaching to it.

Taking in the pitiful amount of leaking essence that was now available to them, the remnants trudged towards the ghostly echo of their disintegrating other parts. Following the ghastly breadcrumb trail of itself, salvaging along the way, the remnants unknowingly contaminated the parasitized soul with itself even as the remnants were stained with the leaking essence of the soul. By the time the remnants had reached the end of the trail, once again within their mortal vessel, the weary remnants were nearly indistinguishable from their host.

The rousing soul began integrating the exhausted remnants. The soul didn't mean to. It was simply the spiritual equivalent to an autonomous reaction like breathing or regulating heartbeat. And in the same vein of automatic response, the soul stretched out to deepen it's connections with the new mortal vessel, finding it a great deal more spacious than it's original spiritual seat had been. Under the prime directive of souls, it would desire to grow and fill that space but to do that, the body would need to... wake...up.

Al's eyes flew open as he greedily gulped air, his heart beating a tattoo into his chest. For an unknown amount of time he laid curled up on the bedroom floor feeling sorry for himself, for the kid, for not knowing if or how much of a difference there was between the two. He railed against his lost understanding of reality and his place within it. Most of all, he raged against the unknown, the uncertainties of his new world and what other dreadful things the future might hold.

At some point, he had fallen asleep. He hadn't been that way for long. His aching body, full bladder and growling belly had made sure of that. It had been long enough, however, to see the shadows get longer. As far as he could tell there was little more than an hour or two of good daylight left and he didn't want to waste it.

A few minutes later, as he stared absentmindedly at the sullied table napkin inside the chamber pot, he thought out loud, "What skill is it and how high does it need to be for me to make toilet paper? Is there a possible spell solution for cleanliness? Looks like even with the limitless possibilities of magic it's going to be a b**** for a modern man to get used medieval fantasy bulls***."

Chomping down a slightly withered apple and a somewhat limp carrot from the cellar, Al made his way back to the alchemy room and started trying to sort out what he knew and what he most needed to know. It didn't take much reflection time to realize that Orison wasn't the only one to lose a few things with their merger.

Fighting back a new wave of anxiety, he said to himself, "If a ten year old boy can drag us back from hell or wherever despite being blown to pieces, it's not your turn to be an edge lord. Roll with what you got and try to log some survival increases before nightfall, sad-sack."

Feeling a little foolish, Al closed his eyes and said, "Alright, Orison. Your memories are scrambled worse than bootleg satellite and mine are Swiss cheese, so it's gonna take us both being tighter than skinny jeans to get through this. We're not the queen of England and I don't want to end up with multiple personality disorder so how does this sound?

"Since you got the rawest deal and it's your world, we'll be Orison. Never liked my name much anyway... And since I'm slightly more put together, I get to spin the wheel of this ship but you're a hella more driven than I was or would likely ever be on my own, so you get the subconscious engine room. If you believe in psychology, that will make you the real captain. From now on there is no 'we', there is just two slightly complicated parts of 'me'. Once again, if I put my faith psychology, that won't make me much different than anyone else."

The newly minted Orison didn't know if it was a placebo effect of the pep-talk or if something real and important happened but he suddenly didn't feel so afraid and anxious anymore. The subtle knot of bitterness that had laid in his chest for a long time had also loosened up into a slightly more positive feeling of pragmatic hope.

Unknown to himself, Orison's eyes flickered with a subdued greenish blue glow when they locked onto a magic scroll laying on the enchantment workbench as he said, "Let's do this."